“I saw the cover for the paperback of Alice Munro‘s latest collection, The View from Castle Rock, in an ad in the NY Times Book Review,” a GalleyCat reader emails, “and Vintage has given the book a Sessalee Hensley makeover.” I’ve stacked that new cover over the jacket for the original Knopf edition; and it’s not too hard to see what he’s talking about, although my reference point upon first glance wasn’t so much Hensley, the fiction buyer for Barnes & Noble, as it was all those chick lit covers with women’s legs and no faces. (Not to mention the hot pink lettering; nice touch, that!) “While I understand the effort to sell more copies, it seems like a desperate approach for such a great writer,” our source continues, addressing the “chick lit” question directly: “Is that Vintage’s marketing strategy? I guess, if it gets Munro into more people’s hands it’s a good thing, but for me there’s a real disconnect in tone between the cover and the contents.”
It wouldn’t be the first time; as many readers will be happy to tell you, there’s a lot of serious writing under some of those frivolous covers. But, now that I’m thinking of it, let’s approach the issue from a different angle: All other things being equal, in an imaginary world where Munro wasn’t so beloved by the literati that they make a special Canadian space for her in the Best American Short Stories, would a book with that newer cover have gotten reviewed, even if it had come from Knopf?